The SMS Amazone was a light cruiser

Light cruiser

A light cruiser is a type of small- or medium-sized warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armored cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armor in the same way as an armored cruiser: a protective belt and deck...

 of the Gazelle class

Gazelle class cruiser

The Gazelle class was a group of ten light cruisers built for the German Imperial Navy at the turn of the 20th century. Three were lost during the First World War; the remainder were removed from the front lines after the Battle of Jutland...

. She was named after the Amazons

Amazons

The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...

 of Greek mythology.

She was launched in 1900 and served in the Kaiserliche Marine

Kaiserliche Marine

The Imperial German Navy was the German Navy created at the time of the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 1871 and 1919, growing out of the small Prussian Navy and Norddeutsche Bundesmarine, which primarily had the mission of coastal defense. Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded...

 and the Reichsmarine

Reichsmarine

The Reichsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Weimar Republic and first two years of Nazi Germany. It was the naval branch of the Reichswehr, existing from 1918 to 1935...

 and (after her decommissioning in 1930) as a support ship for the Kriegsmarine

Kriegsmarine

The Kriegsmarine was the name of the German Navy during the Nazi regime . It superseded the Kaiserliche Marine of World War I and the post-war Reichsmarine. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.The Kriegsmarine grew rapidly...

. She was modernised in 1923 but retired on 15 January 1930 (to be replaced by the Köln

German cruiser Köln

Köln was a German light cruiser prior to and during World War II, one of three K-Class cruisers named after cities starting with the letter K. This ship was named after the city of Köln . The others in her class were the Königsberg and the Karlsruhe...

) and struck from the naval list on 31 March 1931. After 1931 she was the base ship for the "U-Boot-Abnahmekommission" (U-Boat

U-boat

U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...

 Testing Commission) in Kiel

Kiel

Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...

. From 6 October 1939 she was used as a support vessel for the "Erprobungskommando für Kriegsschiffneubauten (Gruppe U-Boote)" (Testing Command for Newly-built Warships (U Boat Group)). She was again used as a hulk after 1945 in Bremen

Bremen

The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...

 but a plan to turn her into a youth hostel was not realised and she was finally scrapped in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

in 1954.